4 Answers
4

The 'Power Control' widget has five buttons for turning various functions on and off - including one controlling updating of applications (the circular one with two arrows on it). You can add this widget by long pressing (press and hold) somewhere on your home screen, then selecting 'Widget' from the menu that pops up, then 'Power Control'. I believe that if you press the 'refresh' button to turn it off, it should stop applications updating automatically, but they can still be refreshed manually if needed.

The widget also has handy buttons for easily turning on and off wifi, bluetooth and gps, and changing screen brightness. It takes up a whole row on the home screen though, so you might need to make some room.

FYI, the Power Control Widget is a part of the stock widget and is available in all(?) Android phones.
–
Lie RyanFeb 17 '11 at 10:53

Ah, excellent - didn't realise that. New to this - I'm guessing that it would be good to edit the answer to remove incorrect info?
–
MartinFeb 17 '11 at 11:00

The only problem with this solution is that not all the applications follow the "Auto-Update" state of the phone, so some applications will probably continue to send notifications.
–
jmbouffardFeb 17 '11 at 13:11

Since you do not want to disable wifi or data use, I would check each of the social apps to see if each of them have a setting to disable updates that you can turn on/off or set a time limit on. Getting a task killer which can permanently disable apps from starting would also help. You could always turn off wifi and/or data use until you need it since these settings are easy to get to in the phone.